Posted on 08/12/2009 2:55:15 PM PDT by South40
With a few hours' reflection, it's become clear that Barack Obama's reference to the U.S. Postal Service at yesterday's health care town hall was the most revealing, and damaging, thing the president has said in the entire health care debate.
Explaining why he believes a public option would not crowd out and ultimately eliminate private insurance, Obama said, "My answer is that if the private insurance companies are providing a good bargain, and if the public option has to be self-sustaining…then I think private insurers should be able to compete. They do it all the time. I mean, if you think about it, UPS and FedEx are doing just fine, right? No, they are. It's the Post Office that's always having problems."
In one brief phrase, Obama planted the image in the minds of millions of people: Government health care = Post Office. Everyone has had the pleasant experience of waiting in line at the Post Office, and now Obama, whose intention was to dispel doubts about increasing government's role in health care, has rhetorically linked health care reform with the Post Office experience. If Republicans can't make something of that, they don't deserve to be called the opposition party.
The Heritage Foundation has done a good job telling us just how wrong-headed Obama's Post Office remark was. For example, private carriers are forbidden by law from delivering first-class mail to your home; the Postal Service loses billions of dollars each year; the Postmaster General complains that he doesn't have the "tools" to run the Postal Service like a business. But in the end, it is the image that Obama has put into the heads of millions of Americans, the one in which government health care looks like the Post Office, that could do grievous damage to the president's dream of a government health care makeover.
“My answer is that if the private insurance companies are providing a good bargain, and if the public option has to be self-sustaining…then I think private insurers should be able to compete. They do it all the time. I mean, if you think about it, UPS and FedEx are doing just fine, right? No, they are. It’s the Post Office that’s always having problems.”
His only lucid moment in six months. My my my....how the truth comes out...
I prefer to portray it as the equivalent of going to the Department of Motor Vehicles myself, but hey... whatever works.
Hopeychangey, indeed.
Barack Hussein ODingus
Everytime he opens his pie-hole, he makes a mess. He must be sick and tired of it, too.
I am hoping he just picks up his ball and goes home to Illinois.
ANOTHER freakin gift to the RNC....wake the heck up!!!
The phrase that came to mind when I read your article was “Loose lips sink ships.” Obama’s ruh-roh moment.
Stupid, inarticulate and Marxist is no way to go through life, son.
So he has 1/12th the lucid moments that Joe has.
The lady who runs our one worker local post office just leaves in the middle of the day. You never know if the place will be opened or closed when you stop by. It ticks me off to no end. I’m sure she is on salary and gets paid for the hours she is not there when she is supposed to be.
The lady who delivers our mail is rude and acts inconvenienced if she has to bring a package to the door.
So NO THANKS to post office like government run health care!
Is he borrowing Bidens tele-prompter?
UPS sucks........I think the Post Office is way better than UPS. Fed X is even with the post office. BO is a total bullshitter and he even sucks at that. What a moron
Further proof (as if it was needed) the jackass just cannot speak w/o his teleprompter.
Let's never underestimate the ability of the current GOP to throw away a golden opportunity with both hands.
After finding our neighbors OUTGOING mail in our mailbox (utility bills w/ checks for payment), we cannot and do not put our outgoing mail in our mailbox; we drive it to the PO.
How does someone's outgoing mail end up in another's inbox?
LOL Obama is an idiot. The garbage he talks is totally contradictory. Everyone knows that adding 50 mil unisured is going to COST and cause lines and cause rationing but he contines to lie. It is common sense that he is fighting against either we believe Obama or the facts that Everyone knows that those 50 mil don’t use doctors on a regular basis and only get care when it is an emergency so the number actually receiving care at any one time is small, giving them free govt run health care will cause an influx of 50 mil people to an already overcrowded industry. You will have to seriously increase the doctors and care centers to deal with all of these new patients that will now see their doctor for routine carewitout increasing the number of doctors is not possible
Send that TelePrompter to the gulag, or at least the reeducation camp! Do it now! Baaad TelePrompter...baaad!
As a shipper and receiver I have extensive experience with UPS and often sing their praises. Totally amazing.
Good idea, go back to like it was prior to July 1, 1863 when Free City Delivery in some cities started, or July 1, 1902 when Rural Free Delivery started.
Excellent!!
Are there any kids in the neighborhood?
I've found snakes in collection mail boxes. I know they didn't get there on their own.
**CoughCough Kenya CoughCough**
Yep, and to the 17th century healthcare, too. There was not many really ill people around. You are either healthy or no longer coming down for breakfast.
The image in my head is "Newman!"
You don’t know the meaning of Government Worker hell until you have tried to do a bulk mailing. I have done it from several Post Offices and in every case I got the same attitude: Little Napoleons who know they have power over you.
So they just keep saying that thee mailing is wrong and then say “You have to start all over again.” And then they go to their desks do drink coffee and read the newspaper, which you can see but somehow from where they cannot see you.
It makes the DMV seem like Disneyland.
No kids did it. I saw the carrier put mail into the boxes, went to my box and the neighbor’s outgoing mail had been put in my box.
It was done by the carrier, I’m just not sure how.
I’ve got a story for ya’ll:
my sister called me a few times asking if I had this or that particular item from her garage. They’d turned up missing. Not long after, she sees her mail lady walking down the neighbors driveway with a weedwacker. So, she tells the neighbor when he gets home and he calls the cops. The cops end up telling him, after investigating, that she’s pawned 200 items from surrounding homes that she stole.
Guess what? The post office moved her off my sister’s street and never fired her!!
She’s black.
GRRRRRR! Unbelievable!
“His only lucid moment in six months. My my my....how the truth comes out...”
Off the teleprompter, the Kenyan is a boob.
The picture of the Kenyan as a vain dullard is emerging.
bwhahahahaha, thats right Obama, a private company works better than the government run model
Barack Obama’s speaking skills:
“How to Inspire People Like Obama Does” - Business Week
“A Slugfest of Speaking Skills: Toastmasters Declare Obama Winner” - Reuters
“Have you ever wanted to learn the secrets of how to be a great public speaker and develop leadership skills, like Barack Obama, that you can use in your every day life?” - www.obamapublicspeaking.com (yes, there is such a website!)
Yet they manage to keep my business AND make a profit. Even with unlimited funding, the USPS can't even break even.
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